Cake hole

Chiefly known as a vulgar Cockney term for the mouth, “Cake Hole” also refers to a system of caves in Yorkshire which contained Britain’s only salt mine. 

Large lumps of raw salt, known as ‘cake’ were extracted from the caves and supplemented the locals’ salt supplies for centuries until the land surrounding them was claimed by Sir Bertram Warbutton, a gentleman farmer and MP, after the General Inclosure Act of 1845. 

Cake Hole had two entrances on either side of a hill. Wind and rain would blow through the cave from one side to the other, causing a salty spray, known to locals as Betty’s Tears.

Warbutton’s ownership of the land coincided with massive expansion of the railway network. When track and stock started to rust almost as soon as it was laid in the area, the culprit was discovered to be the salty spray coming from Cake Hole. Railway owners resented the enormous cost of replacing the damaged ironwork and, during a riotous session in parliament, Warbutton was famously entreated to “Shut your Cake Hole!” by angry MPs of neighbouring constituencies. He closed off one side of the hill in 1852, but following the death of a child miner (aka a “soda muffin”), crushed – but nicely preserved – by a fall of salt in 1869, the Cake Hole was blasted shut and its whereabouts is now forgotten.